The tea party favorite, appearing on stage with Romney, used a rousing introduction at an afternoon rally that the campaign claimed drew 12,000 people to attack the president in blistering terms and warn of an encroaching “welfare nanny state.”

But when Romney took the stage, he offered a fresh riff on the importance of bipartisanship and promised to work with Democrats.

It was quite a juxtaposition.

“They don’t believe in your individual sovereignty,” said West. “They believe in taking more of your rights and freedoms and your liberties! They don’t believe in the free market! They believe in government, trickle-down government, as the governor talked about. That’s not America!”

“They honestly don’t understand,” he added, “that weakness is provocative, and that’s why we see our embassies being attacked. That’s why we see our flags being torn down!”

Yellow campaign signs for West, facing a competitive race for a second term against Democrat Patrick Murphy, hung on the bleachers set up for the rally in this southeastern Florida city, 50 miles north of Palm Beach.

“I commit to you this,” Romney told the crowd a few minutes later when he got the microphone. “I will do everything in my power to draw on that greatness of the American people. To make us more united as a people. To have us pull together. To reach across the aisle and find good Democrats in the House and the Senate that care deeply about America, just as I do.”

“I know they’re there,” he added. “I know they’ll work together if they have leadership that will actually work and share credit and find ways to solve our great challenges. I know that’s going to happen.”

West’s four-minute introduction — he yelled through most of it — was interrupted repeatedly by chants of U-S-A.

“It’s a race between what is simply called ‘the opportunity society’ versus ‘the dependency society,’” West said. “And what you saw Wednesday night was when the opportunity society takes the stage with the dependency society, the opportunity society wins!”

“America’s greatest days are not in the past,” he said, trying to channel Ronald Reagan. “It may be a little cloudy today, but the sunshine is comin’ through, guys, for this country.”

The official message that Romney’s campaign wanted to drive Sunday was about Medicare. There’s a large senior population in Florida. Democrats have sought to capitalize on Paul Ryan’s controversial budget, which they say turns the popular entitlement into a voucher system. Republicans have counterattacked, accusing the president of slashing Medicare as part of the health care overhaul.